Vietnam veteran war memorial

A Vietnam veteran came up with the idea for the memorial. Jan Scruggs was an infantry corporal who wanted a place to commemorate all those who served and sacrificed their lives in Vietnam.

The wall was designed by a college student. Her name is Maya Ying Lin and she was an undergraduate of Yale University at the time. There were more than 1,400 entries submitted to a national design competition and a panel of eight anonymous judges chose Lin's design.

It took less than eight months to build the memorial. The site's groundbreaking took place on March 26, 1982, and the wall was completed by late October. The wall was dedicated on November 13, 1982.

No federal funds were needed to create the memorial. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund raised nearly $9 million through private contributions from corporations, foundations, unions, veterans and civic organizations. More than 275,000 individual Americans also contributed.

There are 58,286 names listed on the wall as of 2013. The names are arranged chronologically by date of casualty.

More than half of the people listed on the wall are under 22. The largest age group is made up of 19 year olds.

The names of eight women appear on the wall. They nursed the wounded.

The number killed on their first day in Vietnam: 997. By comparison, 1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam.

The state with the highest casualty rate per capita belongs to West Virginia. The names of 711 West Virginians appear on the Wall.

The day with the most casualties was January 31, 1968. There were 245 lives lost that day.

The Vietnam War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 , to May 15, 1975 when the Mayaguez Incident concluded and after two weeks since the Saigon fell on April 30, 1975.

a prolonged war (1954-1975) between the communist armies of North Vietnam who were supported by the Chinese and the armies of South Vietnam who were supported by the United States

The 1959 to 1963 phase of the Vietnam War started after the North Vietnamese had made a firm decision to commit to a military conquest of the South, a buildup phase began, between the 1959 North Vietnamese decision and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to major U.S. escalation.

A war between communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam

It was the war that lasted ten thousand days. The war that inspired scores of songs. The war that sparked dozens of riots. And in this stirring chronicle, Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist Philip Caputo writes about our country's most controversial war -- the Vietnam War -- for young readers. From the first stirrings of unrest in Vietnam under French colonial rule, to American intervention, to the battle at Hamburger Hill, to the Tet Offensive, to the fall of Saigon, 10,000 Days of Thunder explores the war that changed the lives of a generation of Americans and that still reverberates with us today.